Automate GUI Testing With TestNG-Abbot
From NeoWiki
- Easily validate GUI components using fixture objects
Andrew Glover, President, Stelligent Incorporated
27 Feb 2007
- TestNG-Abbot is a testing framework that breathes new life into testing GUI components. This month, Andrew Glover walks you through the hardest part of GUI testing with TestNG-Abbot, which is understanding how a user scenario will play out. Once you've got that down, you'll find it surprisingly easy to isolate GUI components and then verify them using the framework's handy fixture objects.
User interfaces built with Swing, AWT, and the like have traditionally presented a challenge to developer testing because of the following factors:
- The complexity of the underlying graphics framework
- The coupling of presentation and business logic within a GUI
- The lack of intuitive automated testing frameworks
Of course, the first two factors are nothing new -- graphical frameworks are complex by nature and adding business functionality to a GUI application has always posed a barrier to testing. On the other hand, a number of handy frameworks have popped up over the last few years that actually facilitate testing of GUIs.
This month, I introduce a neophyte framework that makes great strides toward easing the pain of testing GUIs.
Introducing TestNG-Abbot
TestNG-Abbot is the result of the marriage of two successful developer testing frameworks: Abbot and TestNG. Abbot is a JUnit extension framework specifically intended to enable programmatic isolation of GUI components, and it provides an easy way to validate GUI behavior. For example, you could use it to obtain a reference to a button component, programmatically click it, and then verify the action that followed. Abbot also comes with a script recorder, which you can use to lay out a test scenario in XML format and run it programmatically.
I've written about TestNG quite a bit in this series, so I'll keep my comments here limited. Basically, TestNG is an alternative to JUnit. In addition to all the expected features, it enables a few extra ones. As I have written elsewhere, TestNG is especially well-suited for higher level testing where it can be used to test with dependencies and rerun only failed tests -- in short, the types of tests that come in handy when testing GUIs. (See Resources for more about TestNG.)
With progenitors this impressive, it's no wonder that TestNG-Abbot is such a whiz kid. Like Abbot, TestNG-Abbot enables programmatic isolation of GUI components. At the same time, it uses TestNG's assertions to abstract the details of GUI manipulation into simple fixtures that expose validation methods. Used properly, TestNG-Abbot's intuitive fixture classes make GUI testing almost as easy as stealing candy from a baby. (Not that you would ever want to do that!)
Intuitive fixture classes
The current release of TestNG-Abbot supports seven fixture types, including ones for manipulating buttons, menus, labels, and text-entry components, like text fields. What's more, these fixture types are logically linked to the code under test (that is, the components of the GUI) by name only. This makes for loose coupling between the GUI and its tests, which is beneficial for at least two reasons:
- The tests do not rely on GUI components being specifically located -- thus they can be moved without breaking your tests.
- Tests can be authored early and withstand layout and aesthetic changes during the development phase.
While currently only seven fixture types are supported, others are coming soon. More fixture types will only increase TestNG-Abbot's effectiveness at programmatically validating GUIs.